Radar

Jeff returned to the boat at 5pm to begin installation of the new radar we bought yesterday. At 5:30 Matt called to say the longer cable had arrived on the Alaska Airlines flight, and Cathryn walked up to the street to meet him. 

Bob played "Assistant" for the next five hours, finding tools and other supplies Jeff needed, and helping remove the refrigerator to pull the cable down the wall from the radar mast through the flying bridge to the lower helm.

Jeff squirmed under the lower helm and completely disappeared from view, pulling cable.

Finally at 10 pm the installation was complete and voila: the radar works! Jeff is amazing: he can do anything! 

And so tomorrow morning we pull out of Ketchikan and take a 4-day journey around the Misty Fjords National Monument loop. We're pretty sure we won't have a cell signal that whole time, so we'll post photos when we're back online. 

Goodnight, Ketchikan! It's been great.

Ketchikan

This city of 8,000 residents is all about fish. Or fishing. 4 marinas cater almost exclusively to the fishing fleet, though they assign slips temporarily to RVs (recreational vessels like us) when slips are empty because the working boats are out fishing. Except for the many restaurants and shops that cater to the thousands of cruise ship passengers who unload here every day in summer, everything else supports the commercial fishermen and women.

Thursday we spent the day arranging purchase and installation of a new radar, as our 15-year-old radar died the day we rounded Cape Caution in thick fog. Fortunately we were with a buddy boat that had functioning radar; we followed them closely until the fog cleared.

We're traveling on our own now, and it's not safe without radar. Getting run over by a ferry or cruise ship in fog would ruin our day.

Pacific Pride sold us a radar. A customer overheard us inquiring about finding an installer immediately available and chimed in to say "Call my cousin Jeff. Here's his number. He's been doing this stuff since he was a kid." These Alaskans are amazing, and know how to do everything!

So Jeff showed up to do the installation, only to discover the cable connecting the monitor at the lower helm wasn't long enough to reach the dome mounted on the mast. Guess who got a ticket to fly Alaska Airlines from Seattle to Ketchikan today? That's right: our new, longer cable! 

Bob awoke at 4:13 a.m. to pounding on our hull, to find a 16-year-old crew member pointing at the 70-foot fishing boat idling 15 feet away and saying "Captain says to tell you we're back from fishing, you're in our slip, so you have to move. Now." 

This is called "hot berthing", in which slips are temporarily assigned to traveling recreational vessels like ours when the commercial fishermen who rent the slip year-round are out at sea. So we stumbled out of bed, moved out of the slip and idled nearby to call the Harbormaster on the VHF and phone for instructions on where to go next. All 4 marinas here are full of commercial vessels and managed by a single Harbormaster. Getting no response, we traveled to the next marina and tied up at an empty spot. An hour later we were told we couldn't stay there either, so the Harbormaster moved us to our third marina and slip of the morning. Whew! Harbormaster told us the fishermen aren't supposed to do that in the middle of the night, but some ignore the rules.

Meanwhile, we stocked up on groceries, took a nap, and watched the hard-working people on adjacent boats repair their nets, load gear and prepare to leave again. That's the view from our window.

Alaska!

Milestone day! In 2009 we spent two weeks as guests aboard "Gold Rush", a 60-foot pilothouse trawler, traveling from Port Angeles, WA to Ketchikan, AK with owners Greg and Terry. We were in awe of the fun, the scenery, and the vast amount of knowledge and skill Greg and Terry had in order to safely make this trip. We were blogging at the time and wrote that we "could never imagine being able to make such a trip ourselves". 

But unknown to them, Greg and Terry sparked a fire in our brains that led us to take 5 courses from the Power Squadron: Cathryn had to take the engine mechanics course twice :-(  !  And we bought a bigger boat, went on lots of trips including the Great Loop in 2012-13, made a lot of mistakes, learned from them, and tried to make it to Alaska on our own in 2015. And didn't make it (read July 2015 posts if you don't know this story). 

So today we woke at 4:30, cast off our lines, and began a 95-mile trip to try to complete this quest.

Early morning light, calm on Chatham Strait.

The NOAA forecast called for light winds 5-15 knots with six-foot seas crossing Dixon Entrance, the last open-to-the-Pacific Ocean segment with a long crossing, posing risk of weather and rough seas. Instead we found calm seas with ripples!

After so much time in remote territory, it was a shock to come into a developed town with a busy harbor, dodging the commercial fishing fleet that mostly occupies this city, Ketchikan.

So mid-afternoon we pulled into Ketchikan, cleared U.S. Customs by telephone (thank you, NEXUS cards!) and tied up to the dock where cruise ships and eagles are about equal in number.

Thank you Greg and Terry for introducing us to this form of travel, and for sparking our interest. While we'll never have the full range of skills and experience you two have acquired over the years, we managed to do this trip and have loved it!

Prince Rupert

As has become the pattern, we woke early and traveled 94 miles in 9.5 hours from Hartley Bay to Prince Rupert, the last Canadian outpost before heading north to Alaska. A side trip into Lowe Inlet and the noisy waterfall was in hopes of seeing bears, as we did here in 2009, but no such luck this time.

This deep, steep stretch had us sometimes traveling only 50-60 feet from the rocky shore in 400 or more feet of water.

Sunny, warm Prince Rupert gave us a chance to walk to the chandlery for a few items and have a terrific dinner at Cow Bay Cafe, Linguine Pescatore, as the halibut was sold out. 

Hartley Bay

The stretch from Klemtu to Hartley Bay, 79.8 miles, defines "remote cruising". No marinas, no towns, only 4 boats all day, one of which was THIS, fortunately seen on AIS before we rounded the corner and crossed its' wake. 

But we had some sunshine for the first time in many days

and waterfalls every time we looked out the window, many dozens of them!

And ended the day tied up to the free dock at the First Nations Village of Hartley Bay in Canada, where we celebrated the Fourth of July with wine and flag-waving, but no fireworks, by ourselves, all other boats being locals except one 52' sailboat with Canadians aboard.

Klemtu

We got an early start in the rain, dropping the rafting lines from "RePhyl" after saying goodbye and heading to the fuel dock. 

Early on, a Minke whale popped out of the water only 50 feet from the boat.

The wind was blowing stiffly last night, but forecast to settle this morning. It didn't settle quickly enough, so as we headed west to Milbanke Sound, found southwest winds and 12-foot seas, the biggest we've been in. "Phoenix" rode like a champ, and Bob was okay, but Cathryn wasn't happy. So we ducked into Mathieson Channel after two hours of growing discomfort and took the longer back-route to Klemtu on Finlayson Channel. Anchored at Clothes Bay, we had the whole place to ourselves except for a number of bald eagles topping some trees.

An announcement on the VHF radio said some students were performing dancing and drumming at the Big House tonight, so headed to shore to watch.

A number of Klemtu residents shared stories of their families, community and history, making us feel welcome. 

Shearwater, Canada Day

We followed "RePhyl" out of Ocean Falls in moderate fog, our radar still not working. It's 2.5 hours to Shearwater with nice scenery and a rocky, winding slow speed section through Gunboat Passage, reminiscent of some we snaked our way through on the Great Loop.

On arrival at Shearwater Marina, it was raining, blowing, and we idled in the  harbour an hour while they shuffled boats to fit us in (we had a reservation) because they were over-booked, so ended up rafting us together.

Hoping to find an electronics tech to look at the radar, we had no luck, so went searching for Don Tite and Ian Reid, the two Coast Guard guys from Bella Bella who rescued us last summer. We found Don's parents and learned he's on assignment in Victoria now. We bumped into Ian at a restaurant, so had another happy reunion and hugs, met his fiancée, and were invited to their wedding on the beach at Bella Bella next month. 

Dinner at a restaurant (first since we left home) with Darrell and Charlene was delightful, and we all planned to stay for Canada Day music in the bar including an Elvis impersonator, but were too tired.

On the way back to our boats we ran into Bill and Annie from God's Pocket 150 miles south of here. Bill helped us change out a broken alternator in Port Hardy last summer. Serendipity, another reunion!

Saturday morning dawned blustery and rainy, but we'd planned an oil change for the morning, laundry and groceries for the afternoon, so no kayaking, fishing or crabbing for us!

Tomorrow morning we say goodbye to Darrell and Charlene as they head south and we begin moving north again.

Ocean Falls

70 miles further, we arrived at tiny Ocean Falls, population 19, former site of a Crown-Zellerbach pulp mill (then with 5,000 residents). The notch in the mountains ahead is the channel entry to Ocean Falls.

Harbormaster Herb owns the small marina and gave Cathryn and Charlene a lengthy tour of the former warehouse he brought back from the ruins, remodeling for boat storage, workshops, a two bedroom apartment and his "Wednesday men's lunch" dining hall. Herb is full of fantastic stories.

A dam sits just above the ghost town and provides water to Ocean Falls and electricity for the nearby communities of Shearwater and Bella Bella.

Herb made cedar cutting boards for Charlene and me, and "Nearly Normal Norm" gave us a tour of his treasure trove museum.

Phoenix and RePhyl, seen from the road. 

Bob and Darrell dropped crab pots and pulled 4 Dungeness out of the water.

Pruth Bay at Hakai Institute

We anchored near "RePhyl" in Pruth Bay, just offshore from the Hakai Institute, a scientific and environmental research organization funded by Eric Peterson. Staff here were the First Responders who came to our rescue last summer before the Coast Guard arrived. The campus is gorgeous, staff are friendly and love to share what they're working on, and 10 nearby beaches are spectacular.

Late in the first day, we searched for and found Rod and Blake, the two Hakai staff who first rescued us last summer, then repaired our boat and drove it 80 miles south around Cape Caution to leave it at Port McNeill for a month until we could arrange to bring her home.

It was a wonderful reunion, full of hugs and stories and happiness.

Cape Caution

Alarm sounding at 5am, we found fog so thick we couldn't see "RePhyl" anchored 100 feet away. We talked on the VHF and decided to travel the 2 miles out of the Harbour and see if it cleared. 

Since our radar wouldn't spin up, "RePhyl" took the lead. For two hours we followed them as closely as we safely could, sometimes losing sight of them and steering to stay between the lines of their wake. We connected often via VHF.

Finally the fog lifted, ocean swells grew and we were able to steer our nearby but separate paths around the Cape and into Fitzhugh Sound. Felt good to get out of those huge swells!

Turning left (west) at Kwakusha Channel into Calvert Island brought us back to the scene of last summer's boating accident. We held hands and shared memories.

North of Cape Caution

While in Port McNeill we were docked to another Navigator, same type of boat as our "Phoenix", so met Darrell and Charlene on "RePhyl" and decided to leave together the next day to buddy-boat around Cape Caution.

First day's journey took us to a beautiful anchorage at Allison Harbour where we all dropped kayaks and went paddling.

Port McNeill Revisited

When we cast off our lines at 6:45am, we'd planned a short-ish day, knowing winds "always" come up in the afternoon, making travel on Johnstone Strait at least uncomfortable, sometimes scary. Instead we found no wind, flat water and a current pushing us 2-4 knots faster than normal speed at 1500 rpm, so we just kept going. 

And going, and before we knew it we'd passed our end-of-day destination. Note the 12.9 knot speed (almost 15 mph) in the top right corner of our chart plotter above. Wow!

Are you tired of photos of gray water and skies yet? Not us! As long as wind and water stay calm, we're happy. So 74 miles and 7 hours later, we pulled into Port McNeill near the top of Vancouver Island, further than we'd planned to travel today.

This place is special to us. It's where "Next To Me", our previous boat, stayed for a month after last summer's accident and our emergency evacuation. It's where Captain Bob Smith, a complete stranger to us and un-met until his arrival aboard "Next To Me", bringing her home to Seattle for us a month later, became part of our lives. It's where the helicopter that rescued us is housed. So this place is full of "Angels" for us. Steve and Jessica Jackman, owners of the marina here, orchestrated enough of that stuff to have become special people too. The boating world has lots of wonderful people. We are grateful.

Apologies for the lack of photos today. A school of dolphins repeatedly and gracefully breached in front of the boat, but we weren't quick enough to catch any on camera. 

We'll be here a few days doing an oil change, topping off fuel and water, laundry, groceries and other mundane stuff while awaiting a weather window suitable for rounding Cape Caution, the next "gateway" that stops lots of folks from moving further north. Still happy and well.